


The Girl

by InfernalPume



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-02
Updated: 2017-05-02
Packaged: 2018-10-27 01:15:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10798683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InfernalPume/pseuds/InfernalPume
Summary: dumb thing for class





	The Girl

 

White shirt, dark stockings, knee length skirt, and a tight waistcoat.

 

The girl rationalizes to herself that she has to wake up early, so as to leave time to collect her uniform. The shirt is easy enough to find, as it is hung with the rest of the fresh laundry in the standard dormitory closet. Since it is without doors, more a cubby then closet, even a messy and forgetful girl like this one can always tell where to find her uniform. The stockings are a cinch as well, the only real difficulty lies in untangling the right pair from the black mass spilling out of the bottom drawer like Lovecraftian bile. The skirt is the same one she’s been wearing for weeks, and will continue to shamelessly wear until she spills something and has to clean a new one. Finally, the waistcoat is pulled from her hamper and stuffed into her bag. Sixteen-year-old girls are not exactly much to look at in the way of shape, especially in a deliberately ill-fitting uniform. So she has to sneak the form-fitting waistcoat past the dormitory councilor if she wants to wear it, and continue the illusion of cleavage another day.

 

The girl is the first one in the common room, as she always is. She likes to play a game with herself, pointedly refusing to look at any clocks and guess the time based on her perception of the room. There isn’t much to go on, Matthew Hall is settled snugly behind the infirmary and surrounded by a thicket of trees. The only splinters of natural will light peek through the glass entrance at precisely 8:45 and last only twenty minutes or so, depending on the snowfall. So it is the common room is bathed in its usual gloom, lit only by the shifting colors of a news broadcast on the ancient T.V. in the corner.

 

She suspects- or rather _hopes,_ the time is 6:45, but is disappointed to find the world muddy and dark when she goes to push open the door.

 

Chill leaps up her legs like excitable dogs, the girl has to hold down her skirt’s hem to keep from rising. The damp air is thick in her lungs, as if she has swallowed a barbed line that scrapes through her chest with every breath. A single bird sings, the mortal enemy of all students housed in Matthew Hall, and the girl debates whether or not she should talk to him today. It seems like the sort of thing a main character would do, but since the Angelica incident she isn’t sure if she deserves to be a main character.

 

Heavy winter boots trudge through the gritty snow, kicking at pebbles and looking for new sections of ice to crack. It’s a bit like popping bubble wrap, though with the added frisson of a boot full of water for excitement. It would be a game, if she were still young enough for games. When the search proves unfruitful she tests the sidewalk for black ice.

 

Four years enrolled at this school and she has only ever slipped once. It had been her own fault, running in circles for fun she had tried to leap over snowbank and into the street. It wasn’t so much a painful fall, but stung because someone’s father had been right there to witness it and come out of his car to see if the she was alright. The girl still was trying to think of an excuse to despise the man’s son, but so far had come up with nothing.

 

Ever since that shame the girl had avoided sidewalks, and instead takes the thin path carved directly through a bank by exhausted feet during a late night fire drill. If she is to fall it would be a lot worse, she’d might get snow in her boots, but at least it was normal to slip in ice. People slipped in ice all the time, only idiots managed to twist their ankles on sidewalks.

 

The sun is rising somewhere else.

 

Not here, because the campus is built on a hill with the dorms and dining hall at the foot. The academic buildings are at the top, as if designed to sting the eyes of sleepy students, while the amenities sleep in the hill’s comfortable shadow. The sky is almost bright as the girl maneuvers a thin path through high snow banks, but the sun will not grace her with its presence until mid morning at least.

 

The entrance to the Dining Hall is much like that of Matthew Hall and the infirmary, a glass box of doors protruding from a traditional stone entrance. It is supposedly designed to catch the cold, as well as any foul smells that drift over from the farms, but its only ever used for uncomfortable conversations away from the student body.

 

The girl’s breath prepares to hitch as she reaches for the icy handle and feels a specific satisfaction when the door swings open without issue. She has been locked out of both halls before in the early morning, and the boredom was always unbearable. Today luck is on her side, the door swings open and she is buffered by a relatively warm puff of air.

 

The girl holds her breath in the glass chamber to avoid the smell and enters the hall, kicking the snow out of her boots on the branded mat. From there she trots up and down the length of the hall to make sure they’re dry. She’ll only get away with this now. Once the nurse comes to set up the morning meds he’ll scold her for running inside. She’ll have to get it out of her system now, so she lines her boots up with the scarcely noticeable seams in fake marble and rejoices that her shoes are now long enough to fit the patterns perfectly.

 

Like the academy as a whole, the Dining Hall is nothing but false grandeur. Through the gaps in the light fixtures you can see elegant high stone ceilings and wooden beams, but look closely and you will see wires and outlets cleverly hidden in the shadows. The walls are a humble cobblestone, which look quaint until you get close enough to see candy wrappers that had been stuffed into holes in the fixture. The painted plastic tables are convincing enough mahogany, unless you find yourself on the floor and notice the metal legs beneath. An afternoon spent with an eating knife and a crowd to obscure the teacher’s vision proved that the chairs were in fact made of wood, but a soft enough wood to puncture with fingernails as she found out during the bubbles incident.

 

But none of that really matters, not to the girl anyway. Unlike the kids from wealthier families, she knew exactly why she was here. It had been her idea to be sent away, wanting to collect ‘tools’ as the family therapist had instructed her for her interview. Horror stories of her older brother’s old school have told her that most places like these are far, far worse. Sure the food gets shittier every year, and sure not a dollar of the checks written at fundraisers goes into equipment, but at least it still says “Preparatory Academy” on the pamphlet, and operates as such.

 

The girl keeps glancing towards the entrance, waiting for the nurse. Her pacing had once been considered charming, but since the bathroom break incident teachers are weary of her. Every time she hears the door opening she veers to a water fountain so she might have an excuse, and by the time he does join her in the vast gloomy hall she is innocently trotting back to her friend’s table.

 

Light leaks in through the large windows, even though real sunlight won’t peak through for hours. The girl slides her hands into a dull silver patch as if she will feel warmth, and faintly wishes she was a better artist. This feels like a scene that should be captured, even if she wasn’t allowed in the art room without supervision since the charcoal incident.

 

The relief the girl feels upon her friend’s arrival is fleeting. She trades greetings with the Upperclassman before they are both plunged into silence. One of the only two jokes they share together is that of the truly ludicrous amount of sugar he puts into his coffee. Its not funny anymore, but she teases him anyway. He offers her a passive nod and a pity laugh, then lurches to the mess to make his breakfast. The other joke is that he, like all the other stupid Americans, refers to his crumpet as an ‘English muffin.’ Like the coffee, the girl only pretends to still be offended by the term, but when he praises his English muffin she pouts obediently.

 

The boy smirks as he slides his knife over the treat, spilling crumbs onto the fake mahogany and pointedly missing the greasy paper plate he had toasted it on. Then, with all their personal arsenal spent, the girl just feels awkward again. He always has a standoffish approach to her in particular, the sole female in a group of hierarchal alpha schoolboys. They trade commentary on the weather after a long silence, and she tries to strike up further conversation to somehow prove herself worthy. In response, he replies casually, never looking directly at her or make an attempt to expand on her probing. She hadn’t known he was in love with her then but, thinking back, she assumes these quiet moments together were the origin of his feelings.

 

The second to arrive is always a relief, not out of any affection for him, but rather to push the scrutiny to another. It will be one of two, the loud perpetually red-faced senior who they hated for his mere existence, or the slug-fingered Freshman who was still too spineless to pick a favorite flavor of jam. Once there are lesser whelps to criticize, the girl is always placed upon a pedestal in which she cannot be touched. She’s just a girl, after all.

 

Today it is the Freshman, his Adam’s Apple bobbing as he sees there is no one at the table below him on the totem pole. He sits and feebly tries to start conversation, to which the alpha expresses his disinterest. The girl hops on the hate train obediently, going further then necessary in her jeering. Slug-fingers’ hands become more sluggy, leaving a wet imprint where he grips the table. It’s an tired source of harassment, but who is she to break tradition? Until everyone’s favorite punching bag shows up, he is the worst person here.

 

Next is the most autistic one, drifting in with a vacant smile and fingers that twitch and clench at random. Its’ the girl’s duty is to take on the responsibility of her all friend’s emotional baggage, but the autistic seeks her council the most. His birthday is coming up, and his father has probably sent him a gift. It’s an old story that she has heard in snippets, the birth, the abuse, the divorce, leaving poor boy with an already confusing approach to relationships unable to discern exactly how to feel about the man. Much of what the autistic will say is repetition, but the girl will listen and nod and hug him when no one is watching as she always does.

 

But when she makes an excuse to leave the earshot of the others so he might corner her for a chat, it isn’t his daddy issues that she hears about. He is in love, apparently, and as the only woman he has ever been able to speak to, her time has come to navigate him through this strange and confusing time. It takes a moment for him to get past the façade of romantic pining, but after she crosses her arms and gives him the look he is ready to admit that the feelings are entirely carnal. The subject of his affections is not known for her winning personality, after all. The advice she should give him is to stick with porn, but it is a responsibility of an emotional guardian to bolster the confidence of her boys. She makes up some speech about his good qualities and encourages him to make a move. This turns out to be just as effective, he blanches and quietly backs down. Crisis averted.

 

No one comments that it took her entirely too long to retrieve an apple, because no one is allowed to care. She sits quietly and picks at the sticker while more of her less important friends fill the seats. Light conversation has tried and failed to begin, up until the boy she loves arrives.

 

Like her he wears a black vest that hugs the unfortunate uniform silhouette, dark pants that are not dress code and he doesn’t care who knows it, and long black curtains of hair that cover the majority of his face. Famously he went blind in one eye a result of one of the many hilarious misadventures from a highly abusive childhood, so he makes do with the other. Supposedly he also has terrible acne, but no one’s proved it yet so the girl can pine after him in peace. He is the loudest, the strongest, the silliest, and the one who everyone will try to impress from now on.

 

He slumps next to her, and she glows with affection. Girls are softer then boys, both physically and in terms of social acceptability, he is allowed to lay his head in her lap and nap through breakfast. Even dozing he commands everyone’s attention, slug-fingers and the autistic trying to catch his approval. The short responses he growls out are funnier then anything that has been said so far, including but not limited to: a swear, a belch, and a fart.

 

She loves him with all her stupid heart.

 

Soon after that, her boyfriend arrives. She swats the boy out of her lap much to his disapproval, and goes to wrap her arms around her boyfriend’s shoulders from behind and kiss his neck. He nuzzles into her briefly without a word, then goes to sit with his friends across the hall. It is a Wednesday, she has no obligation to try and pin him down for a romantic evening until Saturday at the latest. It seems redundant to have sex on a Wednesday, and recently his homoerotic fixation and best friend mentioned in passing that real men don’t spend too much time with bitches.

 

By the time she returns to the table, her crush is awake and captivating everyone with his charisma. She is a little disappointed he will no longer be needing her lap, but can’t say so of course. At least no one sits in her seat, everyone knows better since the fork incident, so she lays her head on the table as a hall full of teenagers builds a sort of white noise around her. It is almost 7:30, the first rays of sunlight spills over the hill.

 

The sun is always the last to rise, and even as her friends grumble at the prickling light and complain about the cheap blind’s ineffectiveness, this moment is in itself the most spellbinding. The girl is the kind who can stare directly into the sun, and doesn’t know why other people think it’s such a big deal. A patch of warmth finally formed where she had lay her head, and in turning her cheek to it she looked at her boys. They’re all her boys, of course. She doesn’t really like any of them all too much, but they’re her boys and she always wakes up early so she can greet each of them one by one.

 

And maybe that’s the part he misses the most, the girl-turned-man reflects as he stands in his boxers with a mug of coffee on a Sunday afternoon. More then the shitty food or the dumb friendships, just watching the sunrise. Being there, being present to witness a world bathed in  creeping light. He doesn’t think anything could ever get him out of bed in the same way. He just used to care so much. Now he’s too jaded, too disillusioned by the waking world and too seduced by his dreams. As he often does while at his lowest, he speculates he could be happy if only he had a reason to watch the sunrise again.


End file.
